Will There Be One Less Hollywood Sucker?

Even rag trade billionaire Sidney Kimmel has heard that he’s getting out of the movie business. He told me today he’s cutting back, changing his bank terms, and probably allowing his distribution deal with MGM to expire — but not planning on shuttering his film company. Though Kimmel does acknowledge that all those changes probably fueled the film buzz that he was fed up losing money on the eve of the opening of his R-rated teen comedy pic Charlie Bartlett which MGM is distributing this weekend. (The film was postponed from a 2007 release date. It’ll probably make only a paltry $3M.)

Just in December, The New York Times fawned all over the chairman and largest shareholder of the $5 billion Jones Apparel Group because of his 3-year-old film company. But Sidney Kimmel Entertainment has lost tens of millions of dollars bankrolling indie films like Talk To Me, Death At A Funeral, Lars And The Real Girl and The Kite Runner which all tanked at the box office. “The problem was he hired a bunch of art house executives, and now he’s tired of making money-losing films,” a source told me today. “He’s unwinding.”

Kimmel acknowledges that his company is cutting back from making 5 pics a year to just 2 or 3. He says Sidney Kimmel Entertainment also is ending its bank terms with J.P. Morgan (“We don’t want to be limited by those restrictions anymore.”) but is also just days away from wrapping up a new J.P. Morgan deal that “gives us more flexibility in terms of doing whatevere we want.” He predicts his company probably won’t look to extend its distribution deal with MGM that expires in December. “We’ll release indies one off,” he told me.

But he insists he’ll go to Cannes with Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (which is in post) and go forward with the Jennifer Aniston starrer Management (which opens in September). And he maintains he won’t be shuttering Sidney Kimmel Entertainment or even changing execs. But he does say he will become more integral in selecting the movies financed though “not playing god.”

17 Comments

George Glass • on Feb 21, 2008 5:47 pm

We can now comment on non-strike related stories?

Whoo-hoo!!!

…I got nuthin’.

Mark S. • on Feb 21, 2008 6:04 pm

Sidney Kimmel Entertainment is definitely heading in the right direction but needs to do one thing to make the $$$. The same one thing that many new writers have to learn when crafting stories and scripts:

You have to think STORY in its most BASIC terms, and add something HIGH CONCEPT into the mix.

It took me years of fruitless scripting to figure it out but my latest scripts (soon entering the market when ScriptShark high-fives them) finally have something for the masses. Story, at it’s most basic, is accessible and appealing for everyone. And it’s why Spielberg has a lock on the magical formula.

Jack Burton • on Feb 21, 2008 6:29 pm

What you need is a better distribution inroad. If the buzz is on KITE RUNNER but it does’t turn up in secondary markets until three months after it’s played New York and LA, no one’s going to see it, particularly not when 95% of multiplexes are stocked with STEP UP 2.

Shayne R. • on Feb 21, 2008 6:50 pm

Mark S., thanks for the insight. I just checked out the ScriptShark website for the first time and see that your career is in great hands. Did you pay for the deluxe service where after the give you the high-five they messenger your script right over to David Lonner?

Mark S. • on Feb 21, 2008 9:24 pm

Wow! The Kite Runner? Anything by Charlie Kaufman? Sounds like Kimmel’s company was making daring choices on artists.

Dean Galloway • on Feb 21, 2008 11:02 pm

Did they really lose money on Death at a Funeral? It’s made more than $40m worldwide and it can’t have cost very much to make (no stars, no CGI).

RWBlack • on Feb 22, 2008 3:16 am

“R-rated teen comedy pic Charlie Bartlett” Perhpas choosing to release a teen film most teens cannot legally view without their parents suggests why the company cannot make money.

It’s made more than $40m worldwide and it can’t have cost very much to make (no stars, no CGI).

Maybe he’s not getting a decent cut of the theatrical take after the exhibitors and distributors?

I think he need to:

1. Improve his distribution deal. MGM doesn’t seem to be cutting it when it comes to getting his films on screens.

2. Improve marketing. This goes hand in hand with the distribution. Hype the movies where they’re playing. If no one knows if the film is in town, they’re not going to see it.

3. Leaven the “art-house” material with more commercial fare. Lars & The Real Girl might make critics swoon, but it doesn’t sound like a fun date movie.

I wish Kimmel good luck. Hollywood needs producers with a little daring to shake things up.

Robin • on Feb 22, 2008 4:27 am

And something like Death at a Funeral should do really well with TV sales, DVD rental and sell-through.

Also something low-concept can make a lot of money as long as it’s also low budget. There’s a paying audience out there for arthouse/indie fare who are bored by blockbusters.

TOM JONES • on Feb 22, 2008 8:40 am

When your giving your movies to MGM
ON a Straight Distribution deal
with no Advance or MG and then paying
for all the Prints and advertising as well
your the Perfect Victim !!! forget about
the Domestic TV deal – your already in whole
You can write this puppy off
Hollywood is a buffet – Mr Jones needs to eat first !!!

alex k • on Feb 22, 2008 9:26 am

The problem is that the execs taste there have the worst aspects of both the pseudo-art-house and the calculatingly commercial, and all their movies feel like fake art films, with awful high-concept ideas at the core that they feel will appeal to the masses. So they’re neither art or commercial. LARS AND THE REAL GIRL being a perfect example–an utterly artless (and faux-arty) script with a very cynically broad “funny” premise, which made for a perfectly awful movie. If people there had the talent to do either one or the other genuinely well they’d do a lot better.

Kathy SF • on Feb 22, 2008 11:35 am

Hello

I have been following the movie ‘Death at a Funeral’ ever since it was announced. The initial reported outlay way roughly $10 Million. I am not an insider in the “biz”, but to me, revenues of $40 million is a solid profit unless there is something else going on!

Even with promotional costs, it surely did make money! It was the number one hit for five weeks straight in Australia, did fairly well for an indie in the US and is currently at an all time high in New Zealand. It did dreadful in the UK however, which I believe from reviews there, they were a bit put off for several reasons.

Anyway, as I followed it’s progress, I was struck by the constant changing of the release dates for one. A bad strategy all around to me, and maybe that had something to do with the heavy hand of MGM, but it changed three times here in the US and left awaiting fans wondering what was up (even after it was advertised on TV). I really tried and am still trying as a fan, to give it the “old-college try” to promote the movie within my sphere, but even to an untrained eye, it looked like someone was not minding the store. Worse yet, it doesn’t help that movies are readily available online through any torrent site or that the whole of ‘Death at a Funeral’ was at one point, uploaded on Youtube!

Whatever the real story as to it’s “demise” one may never know, but claiming it was a ‘loser’ financially is just not correct and in the eyes of many moviegoers around the world. No, it’s not making hundred of millions but in relation to the reported cost, it is a winner. Mayabe Mr. Kimmel is more interested in making hundreds, not tens, of millions??

So while ‘Death at a Funeral’ is not your typical “art house” or “blockbuster” it lies somewhere in between and has relevance surely in the grand sceme of movie making. I sure hope that higher profits aren’t the reason NOT to make a movie like this. It DID make money and for a small, funny farce it was a very fun and wacky time at the movies to laugh out loud indeed.

Hollywood I beleive, has been dubbed by the glitz and glamour that is the “art house” indie favorite. Like the flavor of the month, they now try to embrace the “Sundance” set. Just look at the declining revenues from the Oscar nominations for your evidence. An Oscar nomination meant money in the good ‘ol days but that is debatable now. Why does Hollywood have to keep reinventinig it’s basic business model?? You will never force down the public’s throat the idea of art. So decide who you are, make movies and stop expecting for the next ‘Little Miss Sunshine’.

Grammar Matters • on Feb 22, 2008 11:49 am

Maybe there will be one fewer Hollywood sucker, but there will never be one less.

If you can count it, it’s fewer (raindrop).

If you can’t count it, it’s less (rain).

Someobody who worked with Kimmel • on Feb 22, 2008 11:55 am

You’ve got your dates wrong. Sidney Kimmel has been losing money on films since 1998, when he hired Andy Karsch to run his company and produced something called Curtain Call. He then followed this up with the disastrous Warren Beatty bomb “Town and Country.”

He’s one of those insecure guys with no taste who reads terrible scripts thinking “The masses will find this funny,” and is easily susceptible to the hype that surrounds “important” books (The Kite Runner), or Charlie Kaufman.

He’s a 70 year old dress guy, trying to sell what he’s been told are “really cool clothes” to 19 year old girls.

And that’s why the company is a disaster.

Mark S. • on Feb 22, 2008 12:33 pm

Anyone that uses ScriptShark is never going to make it as a writer and might as well flush their money down the toilet. Spend it on booze. You’ll need it later.

Betty Barnes • on Feb 23, 2008 7:00 am

“R-rated teen comedy pic Charlie Bartlett”

Some people have no conscience. Hollyweird doesn’t care how they influence our kids as long as it makes money. Kids are as knowledgeable as adults; that’s not the point. They just don’t need their young noses rubbed in bad attitude and bad morals. :p

I realize that I’m coming late to the party here, but really – did anyone with an inkling of how movies move at the video store think that Kimmel’s lineup would compete?**

He needs to quit trying to make “art” and start making “ort” – as in “it ort to make it’s money back first!”

There is a formula to this – if they want to make an art film, then run the production numbers and produce it for as cheaply as possible. Don’t spend anything you don’t have to spend.

For the money that he’s spent on these dogs he could have bankrolled a whole slate of low cost, entertaining genre movies that could be developed and presold prior to production — and be profitable before a frame of film is shot.

** yes, that’s where you look to see if a movie is profitable, because DVD is where the profit is made. Theatrical releases are simply advertising that rarely pays for itself.